Lost all my confidence

why not upload some pictures and show us the chart? otherwise how would anyone be able to tell you their opinions without knowing what you actually have done

Hi,

hard to say what you should do. Depends on your system and rules and how your performance has been before... I would analyze what went wrong.

I would analyze every single trade, did I apply my system, my rules... and I would check what is going on in my private live, that might have influenced my view of the market. I would not trade on a live account until I have found possible reasons for an unexpected draw down.

Things like this will happen until you are a trained trader.

The important thing now is to not loose the trust and believe in yourself. You must look at this as something you will have to learn from and keep the winning attitude (if there was one).

As the earlier replies says, you will have to go through the trades, see what you did. And yeah, as Hardy said, is there anything in your life going on that might have affected your decision process?

Stop Trading until you can figure out whats going on. 25% in a short time like that is a sign of either not being able to follow the process, maybe scaling up after losses to trying to get to breakeven emotionally, only you can really answer this, cause we dont have that much to go on.

Hi Silent,

firstly, don't take anything to heart that I will say since it is easy to come up with suggestions and point out errors after the fact.

I'd start with some perspectives on probability in the context of swing trading as I think even without charts we can ascertain some statistics from your numbers:

• I think it is reasonable to assume a 40% winrate for some decent swing trading. Of these trades, there will be some small winners and losers and some bigger winners and some smaller number of bigger losers.
• Thus, your probability for loss would be 60%, if we count small losers instead of categorizing them as B/E.
• With a losing rate of 60%, the probability to encounter a string of 11 losses is ~0.4%. Unlikely, but not impossible.

Without knowning your trades, I would guess that for a swing trading approach, you've put your SL at the correct place (as mentioned) but allowed it to be hit too many times instead of exiting earlier since you lost 25% of your account with 11 trades. Maybe you can identify points where it would have been reasonable to exit before your SL was hit (wedges, number of consecutive bars against you, etc.).

Since you mentioned that preceeding the string of losses was a group of small wins and losses, you could also take a look at if you held those trades long enough to allow for some bigger profits.

If it was for me, I would take a few days or a week off from the charts to come back with a fresh mind in order to analyse the trades objectively.

Hope this helps.

BR, Kristof

Postado por: Ran

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why not upload some pictures and show us the chart? otherwise how would anyone be able to tell you their opinions without knowing what you actually have done

I feel your pain Silent.  I too struggle,  Stops wrong spot, bail to early out of good trades, because I've been burned before.  More often than not I see a trend forming and have a strong Bar, followed by a pullback or doji,  and it blow my confidence as Al's videos always reference a good follow through bar as a good sign.   For one good trade I make two bad ones, with lager losses.  I would love to hear some input form the group on the 2.23 trade day /ES.  Using the sheet I have questions as to some of the suggested entry points.   How do others see the trade  and what confirmation of additional data ( MCAD, RSI etc)  that helps them confirm to execute the trade and stay in it.

1: Why is this a sell point? There was a strong market uptrend. What was the Confirmation that this was not consolidation vs a sell point? Was the goal only to test the first candle (Yellow star)        ?

:  Why would these be a sell?  This is following a 30 bar uptrend, hitting a previous support level that seems to have failed twice  ( blue star)  , and has rejected off a moving average. I would not classify “good follow through bars.”  at this point. Additionally 10 bars and wedge pattern would there be an expectation for it to go up? I did get profitable on this push down but closed to early missing most of the surprise. But also lost money on the three doji and the hammer bars.

3: Why Sell? There are two pushes up however the second bear bar had a large wick that rejected off the resistance point of the previous two leg upswing?

4: Why buy here knowing there in not a 1:2 risk: reward and that ‘Most Breakouts fail? A buy at 5108, the minimum risk would be 5104 but as Mentioned in AL’s videos the more appropriate would be maybe 5101.  Risk about 6 points:  therefore price point would need to be 5120.  At this point has a trading range been established?  Same question with 5.

This is how February 23 unfolded for me.

I sold below bar 4 because it was a failed bull breakout of the Globex high. Stop was above 4. I covered when I saw the strong bull bar 5. Loss of about 5 points.

I then waited for a while because of the TTR and conflicting signs.

I bought above bar 14 (stop below bar 13) because of potential wedge near the MA after gap up open, plus strong signal bar 14. As bar 15 was forming I decided this was not going my way, so I covered with a loss of about 4 points. Now I had a loss of about 9-10 points.

I was trading small at this point, as I generally do during the open, and there had been no opportunity to add to my positions so far.

Bar 15 was a major bear surprise after what turned out to be a bull trap (bar 14), so I sold. After two losses my first priority was to get breakeven for the day, which I achieved in this short trade. I probably should have held on for a measured move down (after breakout below wedge and follow-through – the 25% of the cases), but bars 16-17-18 all had big tails and big ups and downs, so I decided to take my profits and achieve breakeven. I got out of the short around 5104 (I had entered on close of 15 and added on 16, allowing me to get out with a quick profit).

I watched bar 19 and knew this has to be a huge sell climax and potential bottom of the day forming. Didn’t buy inside bar 22 because of the upper tail, but did buy bar 23, added at various places around bars 24 and 26, then took profit of the whole position around 5108 area.

I was also prepared to scale in lower if the market did go for one more poke below 21, but after the sell climax the bears were done, and I knew it can't fall too far below. Ther danger was always that it may enter a TR rather than becoming a bull trend (which is exactly what it did), so I had planned to take profits around of the start of the sell climax (5108 area) right from the beginning and not hold on.

I then stopped trading because I had achieved my daily target.

Hope this helps.

Thanks anything would!  I appreciate your time

For me its the Walmart strategy. I notice I'm good at entries terrible at holding. No more watching for me once I feel like it will reach my TP before my SL I set a OCO order and leave. 2/23 4 & 6 bulls got trapped they both went 1 tick above then reverse down. We had a ii then micro DT with more trapped bulls at 10. Thats where I sold. I waited for some follow through and left. I always look at the pattern from the previous day close. It seemed like we were about to have 2 legs down on 2/22. 2/23 we gapped up but bad follow through buying. 2/23 we were in a TR at the close so I anticipated a continued TR on 2/26. The close (pattern) of 2/23 and the overnight H's were both where we failed on bar 1 and 2 on 2/26 I didn't take that sell because I'm not that confident on the 1st 2 bars but I sold below 8 on 2/26 set my OCO and left which was still a bit early. I'm working on waiting a little more. I'm a low prob high reward trader that's why I set OCO orders and leave. As I said though I get confidence from the patterns that set up on the close of the previous day with the context of the current day. I anticipate meaning come up with scenerios but try to stay neutral and let the chart tell me what to do. Today 2/27 I seen the set up for the bull rally. Seen the wedge overshoot, the head and shoulders, HL for the buy at 5073 but the bear TL had me 2nd guessing if it was worth it because Bulls never broke the Bear TL. I'm still working on entering late. I know you can enter late

I'm accustom to early entries so it's hard for me.

 This is a idea of what I see. I use to do it in real time while trading now I have to stay off the chart to let my trade work.